The Book Group read Bonjour Tristesse a few years ago, and last weekend we had an outing to the Edinburgh Filmhouse to see the 1957 film of the book.
Total spoiler alert!!!!!
At age 18 Françoise Sagan produced this marvellous story of 17 year old Cécile on the cusp of adulthood, having failed her philosophy exams and spending the summer in the South of France with her father who was focussed on having bog standard patriarchal-type fun as it was conceived of in the early 1950’s. In other words he’d brought along a ‘mistress’ young enough for the average chauvinist while affable enough to be daughter’s friend and confidant.
Silly old Pa had forgotten his tipsy invite to a dress designer friend of the family. She arrived and things changed. Free spirited Cécile quite understandably resents being squashed into traditional upper-class maidenhood. Things get messy.
The book is great, but for once I thought the film was even better. Released in 1957, it is an example of filmmaking such as is not seen nowadays and not just because Deborah Kerr and David Niven are dead, but because I cannot recall seeing any other film scene where daughter is driving the car with Pa and chum inside on their way to a glamorous night out. Or driving round Paris in an open topped sports car with her poodle on her lap. I have to reflect at this point whether I enjoyed the cars, the Riviera scenery or the frocks more than the story.
The costumes altogether were a delight. Swimsuits before Lycra with a zip up the back, still failing to fit but looking superb. Kerr retained her cool crisp manner even in the Mediterranean heat, albeit with the addition of a flowered swim cap.
I realise I am interpreting the story at a distance of 50 odd years after it was written and filmed, and through a feminist lens. It absolutely stands up as a terrific example of young womanhood being forced into the straightjacket, that even now, some expect them to live in. And the resultant scheming that can produce as young women assert what little authority and power they can muster in the face of adult restrictions.
I won’t go into a whole discussion of the book, as it deserves to be read and judged on its merits. I'd like to comment more on the film, but as someone who is more filmistine than film critic, I'll leave it to the expert. The New York Times 1957 review of the film is a gem. Read it and shriek.
Bonjour Tristesse (1957) 16.1.1958
Maybe it eventually grew on him?
Screen: Sad 'Tristesse'; Movie Emphasizes Novel's Weakness
By BOSLEY CROWTHER
ACCORDING to most of the book reviewers. Françoise Sagan's "Bonjour Tristesse" was an immature little novel, mainly a catalogue of moods experienced under the strain of a father-complex by a fairly precocious French girl. As a noticeable literary effort, it was somewhat astonishing but thin. The same must be said for the movie that Otto Preminger has made from it—with the astonishment excited for the most part by the ineptness with which it has been done. Almost everything about this picture, which opened at the Capitol yesterday, manifests bad taste, poor judgment and plain deficiency of skill.
In the first place Mr. Preminger, who directed as well as produced, and his scriptwriter. Arthur Laurents, have made no attempt at all to give a mature interpretation to the emotional whims of a 17-year-old girl. Mlle. Sagan's little story of a jealous child's willful move to stop her father from marrying an older woman by intruding one of his former mistresses is put forth literally as Mlle. Sagan wrote it, without any compensation for immaturity. The lack of discernment on the part of the author is carried over in the film.
The girl herself is a headstrong little vixen who stomps through the narrative scenes with an attitude of self-indulgence that inspires small sympathy. And in the scenes offensive reflection in which she thinks back on what has occurred, she is melancholy and self-pitying without sincerity.
The father, to whom she is devoted, is a figment—a shell of a man—a presumably charming playboy with no character or rationality. Why he flits about among women is never remotely explained. And the woman he suddenly aims to marry is simply a feminine facade that develops a final streak of prudery that is incomprehensible. These are plainly the creatures of a child's mind that make no sense in a presumably adult film.
What is more every one of the actors seems incompetent or uncomfortable in his role. Jean Seberg as the center of attention is a well-shaped but callow girl who reads her lines and takes her positions as if she were a misplaced amateur. David Niven is vapid as the father, with some thoroughly wretched things to say and do, and Deborah Kerr is in dire straits as the woman—the chic Parisian—who is beaten by a child.
Geoffrey Horne is oafish and stilted as a boy who has a brief yen for the girl, and Mylene Demongeot is flighty as the mistress who is dropped and later returns. Small roles are played with vain flamboyance by Walter Chiari and Martita Hunt.
Finally, with only passing notice of some crudely embarrassing scenes, we would say that this picture's chief pretension is the magnitude of its frame. Mr. Preminger has set the pipsqueak story in color and CinemaScope that show off the French Riviera more handsomely than a travelogue but smother the half-baked little fable in a mass of scenic cream. If Mr. Preminger thought to hide its smallness or disguise its bad taste thereby, he has goofed on the concoction. "Bonjour Tristesse" is a bomb.
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C03E5D71E3AE53BBC4E52DFB7668383649EDE
I intend to look for more of Bosley Crowther’s film reviews anytime I need cheered up. I could also learn to write such stirring prose! As a final word picture, imagine Mark Kermode labelling anything ‘pipsqueak’.
